on thea/ology and life, from a marginalized voice

the human movement

For the first time, I dropped a class. After one session.

Still, I learned something.

I learned that you can be a respected editor, a decent writer, an in-demand speaker, and keep company with Impressive People–and still be the kind of person I wouldn’t want to be. In fact, it might even require a strand of arrogant narcissism to become such a success. I learned that what matters most to me is the character of an individual, not their list of successes and achievements.

In another class, while giving introductions, we were asked to share what we hope to do after graduating. After half a dozen men shared their career aspirations, I hesitated, then stated that after graduation I hope to be a gardener, and a writer, and a mother, and a good friend, and maybe spend some time attempting to articulate the ways that our bodies teach us about the Divine in ways that words do not.

I am ambitious in that I want to do good work, but I am not ambitious in a career-oriented, worldly, everybody-look-at-me sense. I don’t want to promote my blog. I don’t want to follow people hoping they follow me back. I don’t want to cultivate a persona. I want to live a full life and be a whole-hearted person, and our current society does not measure ambition nor success on such criteria.

There are times–more than I’d care to admit–that I worry I’m failing the feminist movement. And I probably am. And yet, perhaps I am furthering the human movement, the movement that does not place the burden on doing it all—whether it’s “gain all the money and power” or “do all the housework and childrearing” or “gain all the career goals AND be the perfect wife/mother”—but instead places equal emphasis on doing and being. That’s something, I believe, that would benefit women and men and culture and the world.

After writing this, I heard Arianna Huffington’s commencement address in which she states that our current definitions of success aren’t working for women, aren’t working for men, and aren’t working for polar bears. Listen to it here.